so recently many of you have been asking
how i color correct and color grade my
videos so i thought i'd do a two-part
series all about working with color
hello my name is simon cade and this is
dslr guide so the first thing i want to
do is give you an example of all of the
shots that i'm going to be grading this
episode but while i do that i just want
to remind you that this is the first
part of a two-part series all about how
i manipulate color for my films so the
other part is color correction which is
absolutely vital but i'll go fully into
that in next week's episode or if you're
watching this in the future then you'll
be able to find a link in the
description to where you can find part
two okay so the first shot one is a
fairly simple shot of me playing the
guitar and i would also like to say
actually that all of the shots that i do
in this video including this one right
here was shot on the canon t3i using the
cine style profile
so we're going to open up the color
adjustments in final cut but everything
i'm showing you in this video can be
done in any of the standard editors as
long as your software has some kind of
shadows mid-tones and highlight
adjustment so the first thing to do is
to add some sharpening i usually set it
to i'm also going to add a circular mask
and scale it down but then i'll turn it
off because that will be very useful
later on i'm going to select the clip
and hit command c to copy and then i
will select all the other clips and hit
option command v which pastes all of the
effects so the first thing i do is i
drop the shadows a little but then i
like to let the mid tones handle most of
the contrast but if we look at our
waveform on the left here we can see
that everything is below 50 which is
pretty dark so let's boost the
highlights next we'll add some green to
the mid some blue to the highlights and
some red in the shadows and finally i'll
reduce the saturation a bit before
enabling the circle mask we made earlier
if we switch to the vector scope then we
can see that the skin tones line up with
the skin tone indicator meaning that the
footage isn't tinted now if you can't
see this line then go to settings and
you can make sure it's enabled so that's
how i would usually color correct a shot
like that but recently i actually
purchased film convert and while i do
use that for grading now i did want to
illustrate that you can get pretty close
just using the standard color wheels so
with film convert i choose the camera
and profile i was shooting on and then i
set the exposure and the color
temperature using the scopes so next is
the film stock i quite like using this
one because it has some of that teal and
orange look to it and then i adjust the
film color and the curve so it's not too
contrasty and then i'm just going to
tone down the grain a little and then
i'll up the saturation as well the last
thing to do is to add some orange to the
mid-tones and some green to the
highlights so now when we check our
vector scope the skin tones are once
again neutral
so let's compare the two shots we can
see that the film convert lut tends to
kind of roll off into the shadows and
highlights a bit nicer i think at least
so what you notice is that film convert
has some nice variation and contrast in
the face without losing detail in the
shadows or the highlights and of course
the grain is nice but not to everyone's
taste so the next one is a shot from a
wedding that i filmed a little while ago
and you can see that the image is a
little bit underexposed already so to
compensate from that i'm just actually
going to raise the shadows and i'm not
going to drop the midtones quite as much
again i'm going to increase the
highlights and looking at this image i'm
pretty happy with the warm tones but i'm
going to add a little green into the
shadows and blue into the mids which
kind of brings out the jacket of the
suit and i'm also going to counter that
with some orange into the highlights and
if we bring out the trusty circle mask
and check our skin tones we can see that
once again we're nice and neutral again
that orange in the highlights was the
important factor to making sure that our
skin tones were neutral so again let's
see how i'd grade this if i was working
with film convert and in this case i
same as usual set the exposure in the
color temperature i do usually do this
by eye the idea being that it's okay to
not use the scopes in the early stages
as long as you do then check everything
towards the later on process and you can
always go back and tweak stuff so
because this is a wedding i'm not going
to be too contrasty i'm also going to
tone down the grain quite a lot so
looking at our scopes we can see that
we've got all our shadow information and
the highlights are around 75 which i'm
happy with so again we'll add a little
saturation and finally i'm just going to
add a little green into the shadows to
make his jacket pop a little bit and you
can see what that looked like before and
after now if we check our image with the
circle mask we can see that our skin
tone is about all right a little towards
yellow but warm tones where there is no
idea so that's fine
so again let's compare our standard
color correction to the film cover
correction and you can see that there
really is quite a big difference between
these ones i was trying to match them as
much as possible but i did find that no
matter what i did the highlights were
always going to clip a little bit on the
standard color correction even though
there was less contrast in the mid tones
and if i try and add that same contrast
by dropping the shadows then we lose
detail and if i try and drop it by
adding midtones then the whole image
gets dark so then i have to boost the
highlights and then we clip so it seems
to me that film convert does have a
really good way of handling the contrast
so anyway let's look at this shot of the
skier we'll drop the shadows a little
the mids a lot and then boost the
highlights again check our waveform to
make sure we're not losing detail then
i'll add some green to the shadows and
grab the old circle mask to make sure
our snow isn't tinted and again i had to
mess with the highlights a little bit
until the vector scope showed it as a
neutral colour lastly i'll increase the
saturation a bit and disable the circle
mask so that we can take a look at the
final image and for the film convert
version we'll set the exposure
temperature and film stock pretty
similar to before and then i bring down
the intensity of the curve down a little
and boost the saturation finally i'll
use the regular color corrector to add
some more green into the shadows to kind
of accentuate that look and then also
i'll use the circle mask to fix our snow
which in this case needed more purple so
for a wide shot like this where we're
not really focusing on skin tones i
think that you can get a pretty similar
look whether you use film convert or not
but i do like the organic style of that
film green so now you've seen how i tend
to grade most of my shots i would also
like to mention the fact that color
grading is of course another one of our
storytelling devices so this next
example is a shot of a runner so to kind
of represent the grueling atmosphere of
someone who's really pushing themselves
on a run you can see that i've got it
very punchy contrast and i've also
dropped the saturation so let me show
you how i did that look so as i bring
some contrast into this image you'll see
that i set my white balance wrong and i
was underexposed so first i'll boost my
highlights to compensate for the
underexposure and then also take some of
the blue out of those highlights and
midtones so that we have a neutral image
and then if i drop the saturation to 50
then we have a kind of stylized look
that i think at least fits the shot of a
runner it's a kind of standard thing of
if you unsaturate the image then you're
obviously going to have quite a drained
look although you could say it's a bit
cliche but i like this look for this
shot so in film convert we'll fix the
blue tint with our temperature slider
and then everything else is pretty much
the same as usual except that we'll have
more grain and less saturation
so as a taster for next week's video
where i'm going to be doing color
correction i'm just going to quickly
match this shot to another shot that i
filmed
on a completely different location with
different settings so what i do is i
just put the clip on top and i crop it
to the left so that we can see both
images at the same time and then in the
same way i'm just going to adjust
exposure color temperature and curves
until we got something that matches but
i'll be showing you how to match shots
from different lighting conditions and
different cameras and how to fix color
issues in next week's video so do stay
tuned for that one and yeah or before i
forget actually i would also like to say
that i'm going to be putting on the blog
post a whole bunch of videos embedded
that i found really useful in particular
some stuff from larry jordan who is
brilliant at color correction and really
did show me a lot and is where a lot of
the ideas from this video came from so
do check out those videos on the blog
post again link in the description and
thanks for watching i'll see you next
time
you